What do we really need in order to live?
The Lord’s Prayer is the heart of all Christian prayer. It is not only a single prayer that we can recite from beginning to end, as we do in the Daily Office and the Sunday Eucharist, but it is the model for all our prayer, meant to be slowly pondered and offered back to God in our own words.
St. Augustine once wrote that the Lord’s Prayer contains all that we might ever want or need to say to God in prayer (Letter 130.22).
Once we have given praise to God and begged him to rule in our lives and world—“thy Kingdom come, thy will be done”—the first thing that Jesus instructs to pray for ourselves is “bread.”
Why bread, when there are so many other needs in the world, and so much else that we desire?
The Basics for Living
In the world of ancient Israel and in many cultures today, bread is the most basic food item. It represents the most basic things that we need to survive and grow—food, water, warmth, shelter, human touch, and community.
When we pray for ourselves, God intends us to ask not for lofty or complicated things, but just for the very basics. In this prayer, we are all equal. Everyone needs bread to live, no matter how rich or poor, young or old.
We are to be people, in other words, who see ourselves as constantly in need of the simple things of life, and we are told to turn to God every day asking for the basics.
Notice, too, that Jesus teaches us to pray only for our “daily” bread. Our lives are to be marked by constant dependence on God for all that we need to live on. We are to be begging God for our bread, every day. Through this prayer, God shapes us into people who depend on him constantly, and at the most basic level imaginable.
Sustaining the Soul
Yet the “bread” that we need is more than food for our bodies. When Jesus was tempted by Satan to make bread for himself (just two chapters prior to his teaching on the Lord’s Prayer), he replied sharply, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God!” (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3).
Even more than physical provision, the true bread that we all need is the Word of God, and that word is Jesus himself.
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel (John 6:35).
We are to pray every day, even several times a day, that God would give us the most basic things that we need to survive and thrive—and the most basic thing we need is the Word of God, which is Christ himself. “Give us this day our daily bread” is a prayer for God to feed us daily with his Word and with his very presence.
These are words we need to reshape our minds and our hearts. So even here, the Lord’s Prayer is working on us.
God delights in providing for his children. What basic needs do you require from him today?
I encourage you to spend time in prayer and gratitude this day, feasting on his Word and delighting in his presence — a gift provided for us, richly and freely, because of the finished work of Christ.
From Sunday's Class
